Monday, April 10, 2006

Day 3

It has struck me, while there have been no overwhelming hits this year,like Puerto Rico did in 2002, there are a lot of "very good" games andfew disappointments. Today, I'd add Mauer Bauer, Cleopatra & tSoA,and Blue Moon City to the "very favorable" list. A bunch of othersare good and for other people they may be even better, like IlPrincipe, Aton and Times Square. Times Square almost gets on thefirst list, but I don't see a ton of depth yet.

It's been great to play games with (and in several cases, meet for thefirst time) ubiquitous BGGers such as Matthew Monin, Ava Jarvis,Daniel Karp. Matthew Monin, Ava Jarvis and I also happen to sharequite a bit of taste in games, but realized that there may not be acopy of Knizia's Lord of the Rings at the event, which is a favoritewhich none of get to play often enough. Hopefully, we'll find a copy.

So, to summarize the "hits": Thurn und Taxis, Um Krone und Kragen, Mauer Bauer, Cleopatra and the Society of Architects, and Blue Moon City. In the under 60 hours I've been here already, I've played 35 games (though 6 were of "Launch Across", a 90-seconds-per-play Connect 4 meets Gnip-Gnop game) with 35 different people. I'll probably shift gears a little to stop focusing on playing exclusively new stuff, but there's still a bunch of new stuff to try, so not entirely.

Personal

Professional

I am a Engineering Director at Google. My team and I work on Search.

Previously, I was the CTO at an 802.11 location and security company, Newbury Networks in Boston. In June, 1999 I received my Masters degree from the MIT Media Lab. I graduated from MIT (undergraduate) in June, 1997, in physics. Prior to that I was CTO of net.Genesis from 1994 to 1996.